Art 305: Art & Mass culture

Just like with articles and texts, when looking for images or artworks, it is important to verify the trustworthiness and evaluate the Who, What, When, Where and Why of the source. 

The following is a selection of reliable databases and collections to consult when conducting image research. 

• Artstor

  Contains over 2 million high-quality images from museums, archives, libraries, scholars, and artists around the world.

• Europeana

  Provides access to images of artworks and other digitized materials held in European archives, libraries and museums.

• Google Arts & Culture

  Not to be confused with Google Images, Google Arts & Culture provides images, exhibits and interactive virtual views of museums and other participating cultural institutions and historical sites around the world.  

• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

  A discovery tool for public domain and openly licensed content held by archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions in the United States.

• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

  The digitized images from the Library of Congress includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.

• Ad* Access
  A digital collection from Duke University of over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements dated between 1911 and 1955.

The College Art Association publishes a comprehensive guide to understanding Fair Use for the visual arts.  You can also consult the Library's research guide on Copyright for more general information.

Many museums have digitized and made their collections available online.  Here is a list of select local, national and international digitized museum collections.

Local Collections

• J. Paul Getty Museum Art

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art

• Norton Simon Museum

• USC Pacific Asia Museum

National and International Collections

• Art Institute of Chicago

• The Louvre

• Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Museum of Fine Arts Boston

• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

• National Gallery of Art

• Philadelphia Museum of Art

• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

• Tate

• Whitney Museum of American Art